


love you (always)

by highfalutin baby birb (fevered_dreams)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Undeath, fixing the angst i created lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 16:36:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18056144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fevered_dreams/pseuds/highfalutin%20baby%20birb
Summary: Shiro’s ghost haunts Keith. Together, they search for something more.The view from here is beautiful. From here, up on the mountainside that took Keith three Earth days to scale, hands bloody and bruised from the effort, the landscape lives, fueled by the blood of its sands and windswept odes, and it is beautiful.“Why the long face? Isn’t this a great view?” Shiro asks.It is. But, Keith can’t see Shiro very well here. The reds are too strong. His tears, too, blind him.“I miss you,” Keith admits quietly. His throat stings, and his tears run hot. This time, Shiro cannot console him, despite his valiant efforts.Because it is not here. What Keith wants is not here.





	love you (always)

The first time Keith sees Shiro, he’s sure he’s dreaming.

They tell him it’s a space sickness. A result of hopping across too many planets too quickly without the proper immunizations because they don’t exist for humans yet.

“Your body can’t keep up with the different atmospheric pressures and compositions at such a fast rate,” then doctor tells him, touch gentle despite the sterile cold of his gloves. He tries so hard to be kind as Keith shakes on the raised bed, but everything he does feels so harsh nonetheless.

He has not mastered the lulling touch the same way Shiro had despite his alien prosthetic. Keith suspects no one else can. And now, Keith finds himself unable to tolerate any less.

“It’s fighting off a lot of foreign, microscopic entities right now. Take it easy and have someone look over you these next few days,” the nice doctor continues, pitious.

“Yeah,” Keith says, even though he doesn’t really mean it.

Because he lives alone now. His apartment is large, spanning across several rooms, half of which Keith has no use for. He’s never been one to hoard lots of items, after all. Now that he travels here and there across galaxies, he has even less of a use for them.

Only one room holds any real importance to him. In that one room — tucked away in the far back of the ridiculously large apartment the Garrison gifted him at the end of it all to commemorate his bravery and console him for his losses — are boxes. Piles of boxes stacked lovingly one on top of the other, carefully kept in pristine condition as the years go by. Keith even replaces them periodically as time wears them down because he only uses the flimsy, environmentally-conscious cardboard to store everything.

Because that’s what Shiro would’ve wanted.

But Keith hate those days the most.

He hates unpacking all of Shiro’s things from where he painstakingly hides them away. He hates being reminded of Shiro so intimately with the feeling of each tiny, mocking remnant weighing down Keith’s grip.

He hates running his hands over the indents of Shiro’s old dog tags. Even now, Earth has yet to abandon their love for such archaic, symbolic forms of identification. Keith, on the other hand, has long since lost his own tags — abandoned them, actually, somewhere within a galaxy long burnt-out by the collapse of their brightest star. After the whole ordeal, they had hurt him.

Seeing his name listed beneath Shiro’s as a once-upon-a-time member of his temporary, slipshod squad hurt. The way the bumps that comprise each letter of Shiro’s name pierced him something deep and terrible.

_Takashi Shirogane._

_T-a-k-a-s-h-i  S-h-i-r-o-g-a-n-e._

Sixteen letters. Seven syllables.

Perfect for a haiku, Keith always thought.

  
_What a lovely man_

_Takashi Shirogane_

_Let me keep him, please_

 

**(Please, just let him live)**

**(Please, kill me instead)**

 

Those letters and syllables hurt him an infinite time of numbers more than what they are.

Shiro’s name is so long compared to his own and those of many others. Keith used to like that — the way it lasted forever. He used to revel in the way each syllable would roll of his tongue, sweet and so soft for a man so hardy. He especially enjoyed that certain little smile Shiro would always get whenever Keith said his full name aloud.

_Takashi Shirogane._

Now, Keith can hardly stand to even think it.

So, it comes to no surprise that he couldn’t bear to keep his old tags any longer. He let them go with nary a regret. Only tears upon tears as Cosmo howled in mourning for only Keith to hear.

But tears don’t fall very far in space. He had drank them up, felt the salt melt on his tongue, and wondered whether or not he’d drown in them.

He has not. He still lives, even now. The disappointment that lingers sinks down bitter.

And, despite the way they torture him, Keith cannot bear to be rid of Shiro’s dog tags.

Each time he moves Shiro’s belongings, as if possessed, he pulls Shiro’s dog tags out of the simple, sturdy box he keeps them in to look upon them — to hurt himself.

(The words are faded. Rust has begun to accumulate. Keith has expected this, though; he has ever since he first decided to hold this pain so close.

As such, he already has all the tools necessary beside him. Because he does not know how to stop aching. Because it doesn’t truly matter whether or not he abstains from feeling the indents of Shiro’s name beneath his trembling fingers.

It always hurts regardless. The memory lasts forever. In turn, so does the hurt.

With that in mind, he gently lifts the tags up, fights against his urge to flinch away at the clink of metal on metal, and sets to work.

Most of the polishing goes by fairly quickly. They gave the captains and other officials at the Garrison higher-quality metals for their tags, so the debris comes off fairly easily with only a bit of scrubbing. The most difficulty Keith comes across comes from the deep-set rust lingering in the crevices between the small stamped letters.

_Captain Takashi Shirogane._

He had been finest and brightest prodigy, destined to do great things for the advancement for mankind and all the other vapid, mercurial accolades the Garrison so wantonly craved.

But, Keith supposes they were right in the end. Shiro saved the universe, after all. He did so, so much, and for what? Keith, to this day, has no sensical answers.

The tags shine with renewed brilliance once he finishes. Shiro’s name mocks him all over again. Still, he runs the letters and syllables over his tongue once more, compelled to by his own destitution.

**Takashi Shirogane.**

Keith eyes the dog tags once more, careful to not reminisce too much, before tucking them away for another day, for he can only handle so much at once.

He’s not as strong as Shiro.)

It’s almost time to move Shiro’s things again, Keith thinks to himself suddenly. He’s too sick for it now, though. Whether or not that fact pleases or pains him, he leaves undecided.

Instead, he lays alone and prone as he waits for his fever to break, save for a few visits from Hunk and Coran. They have taken up the task of ensuring Keith hasn’t wasted away into a puddle of sweat and vomit within a few days of being left to his own devices, volunteers out of affection and perhaps a dose of pity. It’s a thankless job, but Keith’s grateful regardless.

(Because none of them feel comfortable leaving Keith alone for long these days. He’s certain they don’t think he’ll actually go and do anything too drastic, but, even then, someone has to check to make sure he takes his vitamins and drinks enough water because Keith’s always been like that. He’s always had a one-track mind, singular and headstrong when he doesn’t have someone to help steady him.

And it has been six years since Shiro last touched him.)

So, he waits and weathers his illness out in relative solitude, kept stable by the fortified goop Hunk and Coran slip him every other day. The whole ordeal lasts far longer than he expects, and he hates the respite it gives him. Being idle gives him too much time. To think. To remember. To want.

Shiro took care of him while he was sick, once, when Keith was but a new recruit at the Garrison who couldn’t handle everyone’s sickly tendencies condensed into such an immured space. He handfed Keith all the best (worst) homemade soups he could blunder his way through making while near-constantly checking Keith’s vitals, thorough as always.

And he had been so sweet, cooing reassurances even as Keith hurled up unappetizing and chunky chicken bits all over him. Even as Keith slurred out strange, feverish grumblings about his dead father and the mother who abandoned him, Shiro remained sweet.

Shiro had been sweet up until the very end, as he bid Keith farewell.

 

_“I’m sorry, Keith, but I have to do this. You know I do.”_

_A pause. The lightstorm approaches, and Keith cannot move. Even grief stricken desperation cannot save the only thing that matters. Because the universe does not understand that Shiro is everything._

_A beacon of goodness. The apotheosis of a man of fortitude born from all the misfortunes the infinite span of galaxies could possibly conjure up._

_They said he was going to die within a small handful of years — a laughably short amount of time awarded to such a wonderful being. It had reminded Keith of the ephemeral wingstrike of a butterfly just trying to find some place to pass in peace._

_The Monarch butterfly migration lasts four months. It’s a spectacular sight. Shiro took him out once to admire so they could admire the flash of oranges and black together under the desert stars._

_But a single Monarch only lives for four weeks. They never make it through to the end. That’s just the way it works. Nature has decided this to be so._

_And so, the doctors gave their prognosis, voices laced with condolences that meant little before sending him on his way to wait for it. To wait to die._

_Shiro cried then. That was the first time Keith ever saw him cry._

_And then he died._

_He disappeared, suffered in the ring, came back with something otherworldly and sad, and he died._

_Then, he came back. To Keith. He came back, and Keith foolishly thought that would be the end of it all._

_But he’s going to do die again. They will not let him have this. Any of it._

_“I love you. Always.”_

_Shiro tosses that terribly nonchalant smile Keith’s way, in the very end, over his shoulders and behind him like a regrettable, saccharine love note to be forgotten in the anulls of time. A simple thing. Fleeting. Just so damn forgettable as the whole universe and more rebuilds itself right before their eyes._

_But Keith does not forget. How could he, when he adores Shiro so?_

_‘I love you. Always.’_

 

Keith swallows. His throat aches with the effort. He swallows again regardless, and the deluge of memories proves to be unstoppable.

Sometime after their time at the Garrison together — years and years later as they waited in space for the next disaster to descend upon them, long-since devoid of hope without a tragedy — Keith fell sick again. Shiro cared for him once more, and they reminisced.

“Your heart rate is only slightly elevated. That’s good,” Shiro had said as he smoothed his hand over Keith’s forehead — the one that still burned with body heat and calluses. “You know, back when you got sick all those years ago, your heart rate was through the roof. I was honestly afraid you were gonna have a heart attack at the ripe old age of thirteen. I didn’t know what to do with you.”

“I’m sure you would’ve come up with something. I mean, you know CPR,” Keith hummed quietly before sidling up further against Shiro’s side, sturdy and familiar.

Shiro chuckled ruefully before running his fingers through Keith’s hair, and that was the end of that.

Because Keith didn’t know how to tell Shiro. He didn’t know how to confess to Shiro that his heart had beat so quickly back then because he had been a young boy with a terrible crush that he never quite outgrew, and the sight of Shiro leaning over him with that concerned expression on his devilishly handsome face, framed by the early morning light behind him, had been too much to bear.

Sometimes, though, he wishes he had said something.

His heart beats once. Then again. It speeds up, so fast that Keith, too, fears it might collapse under the weight of his immortal affections.

Honestly, Keith has never thought of his heartbeat as a feeling akin to a thump or a pitter-patter. He only knows them as counts.

One count for life. Two counts for love. Three counts to celebrate that brief, fragmented moment of time when he had it all before the fall. Four counts to make it last forever.

His hearts stops as he recalls Shiro’s death over and over and _over_ again. He thinks he might keel over. Surely, his body cannot continue to sustain itself after so much trauma. It must be tired. He feels tired, at least.

But his body continues to function, and he soldiers on. If Shiro taught him anything, it’s that humans can withstand more pain than one would expect or care for.

Haltingly, his heart starts again, but now the time signature is different, and Keith finds it difficult to keep up, even when he has so much time to lay around and just listen to his new beats.

One, two, and three for loneliness. Four and five for the memories. Six for love. Seven for loss.

It begins again anew. He sleeps in sickness, and he dreams of Shiro. Like always.

Something moves in his periphery right before he fades, but he’s not too worried. He’s just been seeing things recently. Most people don’t bother with him much these days.

(He’s wanting. Hopeful. Despondent. Seeing things because of it. Because he’s weak. Oh, what a pitiful thing he’s become. Shiro would weep.)

 

* * *

 

 

Seven days in, the fever begins its descent into something bearable, and Keith can finally see past the constant tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

And, past the empty darkness of the hallway outside his room, Keith sees him.

As usual, Shiro looks beautiful. He strikes a lovely figure there, white hair haloed in soft lights that only further highlight the sharp cut of his cheekbones and jaw. The lowlights, on the other hand, make his scar pop all the more pretty.

(Keith used to write hymns of eternal love upon that scar, equipped with nothing more than his fingertips and unbearably smitten smile. He used to kiss across the corners until Shiro stopped tensing so much at the thought of anyone noticing his scar.

For Keith adored every single crevice of Shiro, including the ones Shiro hated.)

And, now, Shiro still looks so good that it hurts. Keith’s eyes burn at the sight, and his chest clenches so tight he ceases to breathe. He heaves dried phlegm, ribs rattling with the effort, and he trembles in time with the shake of the dark spots blooming across the corner of his eyes.

Shiro floats forward as Keith chokes. He reaches out, as if to help. Except, he exists as nothing more than a cloying vision that Keith has conjured up as he lays there, possibly dying from a dangerous conglomeration of otherworldly contagions. So, when Shiro draws in close to press a hand against Keith’s chest to help ease the pressure, nothing reaches Keith save for a brief chill and Shiro’s frowning and bereft expression.

Though, the chill does help a bit. Even more effective than that, however, is the fact that Shiro looks startlingly real as he hovers over Keith, incorporeal and oh-so dead as he may be.

Shiro looks beautiful even when he’s upset, gazing down at Keith with melancholic wistfulness. Of course, that’s to be expected. Shiro always looks — _l_ _ooked_ — nothing short of perfect, no matter the occasion. Keith knows as much for a fact because he has never, not once, forgotten what Shiro looked like.

Suddenly, Keith recalls Shiro waking up first thing in the morning, hair frayed and eyes glassy with ill-spent dreams, but so handsome despite the nightmare that plague him — those nightmares that linger in every empty crevice in space. The emptiest rift of them all rests within the idle minds of men, Keith learned long ago, nestled by Shiro’s side as the Castle careened around them.

Even then, Shiro never strayed far from breathtaking. Even with pained wrinkles spanning across his forehead, limbs twitching wildly for purchase against some unknown assailant that Keith doubts he could every truly fathom, it is impossible for Keith to consider Shiro anything other than stunning.

One time, Shiro actually struck Keith with his prosthetic — on accident, of course, while in the midst of a dream. Keith remembers flinching away in his sleep, more startled than truly hurt despite the blood welling up in his mouth, the inside of his cheeks torn apart by his own teeth.

Because Shiro never hurt him before. Not really.

Nonetheless, he remembers the wild look on Shiro’s face at the realization of what he had accidentally done, half-crazed and all-terrified. Terrified of himself. Of what they had done to him. Of what they turned him into.

Shiro thought himself a monster, after everything he had been through. They made him a monster. He told Keith as much that night, words laced with needless apologies upon tortured sobs, shoulders shuddering like a poor pup waiting to be beat again. He confessed many of his fears that night. Keith remembers them all.

Most of all, he remembers what Shiro looked like when he cried, for that was the second time Keith had ever seen Shiro cry. Such sad, unjust sights are not easily forgotten, after all.

The vision of Shiro that Keith has devised today does not cry. He does frown, however. The crease of forehead grows deeper as he moves in closer, floating about Keith as if he rides on the sickly, sweaty fumes surrounding them.

He leans in closer. Keith thinks he can almost feel warmth from the amorphous form that makes this Shiro up. Except it must be from his own body, running fiercely hot, he reasons to himself. Because Shiro holds no heat anymore.

After all, he’s dead.

Regardless, Keith feels himself lifting up off the bed to meet him. He props himself up weakly by his elbows, shaking from the effort, but he continues on nonetheless, too fixated on Shiro’s lovely, lovely face to really care.

His heart feels like it’s about to explode from the strain. The counts skip, and the rhythm goes from half time to a ⅝ beat in seconds, and Keith cannot keep up.

“Shiro,” Keith breathes in the middle of his desperate wheezing. Even now, as his throat tears itself apart from the effort, stopping himself from uttering Shiro’s name in reverence is simply too much to ask for. “ _Shiro_.”

“Keith,” Shiro whispers, “it’s good to see you again.”

Keith blinks. Shiro has never spoken like this during Keith’s pitiful fantasies before. He has never addressed Keith with such sadness before. After all, Keith doesn’t particularly enjoy making Shiro upset.

So, he finds this scene strange. Perhaps, his fever has turned him loose, far too listless to control even his own thoughts.

But at least Shiro’s words themselves are sweet. Keith drinks them down greedily.

Then, Shiro dips down impossibly close, so much so that he would be touching Keith if he could. His chest would be flush against Keith’s, and his eyelashes would flutter against the red-cast apples of Keith’s cheeks — if he were real. Instead, he seems to phase right through Keith, leaving behind patches of hot and cold that ebb through Keith in all the inconceivably right ways.

Keith accepts the relief with few qualms. He lacks the strength to turn down such solace — not even imagined ones.

Shiro’s frown deepens. He looks down with his brows furrowed and lips drawn tight, and he looks like that old, mildly disapproving but mostly concerned squad leader he used to be once, so long ago.

“Look at you. You’re a mess,” Shiro says. He sounds so close, and yet, his voice floats by wildly, vengefully out of Keith’s reach. “Why are you alone? Don’t you have anyone who can look after you until you can actually breathe properly?”

Keith takes in a long, painful breath just to spite his own delusions. His delusions remain unmoved.

“I’m fine. Hunk and Coran check up on me all the time. Even Lance visited once with some homemade remedies,” Keith grumbles when Shiro’s frown buries even deeper into his watery sights.

“You need more help than that, though. You know you don’t tolerate being sick very well.”

Keith scoffs. Then, he coughs. Shiro tilts his head, concerned all the while, and Keith must admit — he really must be bad at managing himself through debilitating illness if he must conjure up images of a worried Shiro to comfort him.

Keith repeats his assurances with as much conviction he's still capabale of. “I’m fine."

Shiro sighs, obviously not convinced but capable of doing little to appease himself.

“I wish I could help take care of you. Like I used to,” Shiro says, and his expression begets a forlorn lover’s devotion.

Keith cries in the face of it all. His sad, pitiful tears mix with those edged on by his sickness, and he cries something ugly and fierce. His frame, thin from his persistent lack of appetite and need to distract himself from the mundanities that Shiro no longer shares with him, shakes from the ferocity of his own emotions.

He has never been particularly adept at handling the breadth of his own feelings. He knows that.

He knows that because Shiro helped him realize as much.

“Me too,” Keith whispers. He feels nonsensical like this, speaking aloud to his sick hallucinations, but it comes out regardless. And, surprisingly enough, it makes him feel better, even if only slightly. “I wish you were here too. So much. All the time.”

He pauses to take in a heaving breath. “I wish it had been me instead.”

The look Shiro gives him nearly kills him on the spot, full of despair and horror as it is.

“Babe,” Shiro whispers, so sweet and so Shiro that Keith only cries more. “Babe, please. Don’t say that. Don’t —“

He does not continue. The heartbreak must be too much for that. It looks mighty debilitating, based on Shiro’s expression.

And it hurts.

“I’m sorry. I’m just — I’m just tired,” Keith says because he cannot stand Shiro looking at him like that anymore. “I should probably get some more rest.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says. The force of his words sends a breeze across Keith’s face. Keith basks in the paltry relief it provides him until it fades, leading him bereft and derelict all over again. “Sleep. I’ll look over you.”

Keith does not want to say it. He wants to keep his painful, piercing words to himself, like he has ever since Shiro died because he knows that no one else will ever truly understand what he wants to say or what he means — what he _needs_. He wants to hold every ounce of this to himself, private and festering in the void that rejects the notion of peace. But, with Shiro before him, such a desire is nothing more than a laughable dream.

“You promise?” Keith breathes into the empty spaces surrounding him. “You’ll take care of me like you used to? Like always?”

Keith’s fantasies have never cried before. He’s never even _though_ t of dreaming such a sight up. Still, this Shiro cries at his words, and Keith wants to take them back. He desperately wishes he could swallow them back down until they erode away in his system, never to be revived. Except, he cannot. Things are never that easy.

Through his tears, Shiro answers. “I will. I’ll always watch over you. Promise. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

He cries, but Shiro still looks as wondrous as ever. Keith wants to stay awake for it. He wants to see Shiro in front of him forever, even if it means he could never sleep again. It might even be good for him, he thinks. His nightmares are plentiful, and all the therapy everyone urges him through have yet to stop the image of Shiro’s death from invading his mind even while asleep.

However, something about Shiro’s effervescent presence lulls Keith’s into something like peace. The last thing he sees before he drifts asleep is Shiro’s face, adorned with a wry smile, even as tears streak down his face.

“Don’t cry. I hate to see you cry,” Keith wants to say. His voice refuses to work, though, and his mouth remains still.

However, he thinks he manages a quick, “Love you. Always,” before he goes.

**Author's Note:**

> got hit by the angst feels, and then this happened... oops?
> 
> please tell me what you think! this is a bit experimental rn haha, so i hope it's going well so far!
> 
> if you want to talk to me or want to know more about how you can support me or request a piece of writing, you can find me on [tumblr](https://highfalutinbabybirb.tumblr.com) and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/highfalutinBaby)! i'm always happy to talk about whatever :)
> 
> (also bc i'm lonely, pls talk to me)


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